Sino-Japanese War

[Gott]

I'm a special member there.We have a dream that as many as western people will konw what had happened in China in 1946-1950 as well as in 1937-1945.So we make a plan to get in tunch with you western people to make western pubilc konw those.My English is pool because I am only a freshman in university.So if somebody wanna get in tunch with us ,he can write a E-mail to:
[email protected]
[email protected]

You're right, not many people know about what happened in the Sino-Japanese War. Many Japanese who committed atrocities in Asia received little or no punishment. It makes everything worse when many modern-day Japanese fail to know the fact that their forefathers committed many horrible crimes. Some people in Japan even think we're lying. It's very sad.

It's okay if your English is poor, I'm sure you can improve some of your English skills by hanging around the TRF.

[Caldric]

Thanks for the site, but I doubt many members will be able to understand what it is talking about.

I'm a special member there.We have a dream that as many as western people will konw what had happened in China in 1946-1950 as well as in 1937-1945.So we make a plan to get in tunch with you western people to make western pubilc konw those.My English is pool because I am only a freshman in university.So if somebody wanna get in tunch with us ,he can write a E-mail to:
[email protected]
[email protected]

Hello, I think this is great, this time period in China is almost completely blank for me.

[philodraco]

Thanks for the site, but I doubt many members will be able to understand what it is talking about.

I'm a special member there.We have a dream that as many as western people will konw what had happened in China in 1946-1950 as well as in 1937-1945.So we make a plan to get in tunch with you western people to make western pubilc konw those.My English is pool because I am only a freshman in university.So if somebody wanna get in tunch with us ,he can write a E-mail to:
[email protected]
[email protected]

Hello, I think this is great, this time period in China is almost completely blank for me.

I am also a Moderator of this forum, I am very glad to know there are so many western people interesting in the history of Sino-Japanese war, I hope we can fill this blank and of course, I hope we can make friend with all of you through the exchange.

[sharpstorm]

Thanks.As a Chinese living in the Mainland China,I'm very glad to see that there are so many western people inteseting in the history about the Sino-Japanese war.But what I should add is that because the Chinese Civil War, the true history of the Sino-Japanese war is blank to not only the foreigners but also the new growen Chinese.So we are determined to do our best to make this history well known to as many people especiall the western people as we could.Now we have many friends and members from the Mainland China,Taiwan,Hongkong,and anywhere there are Chinese living in.We hope more will jion us.

[Feuer Frei!!!]

Greetings,
I am doing a modern history paper in which i am proving that the CCP's involvement in world war 2 was the main reason for their success in 1949. Therefore i was wondering if anyone had the numbers of CCP troops in relation to their GMD counterparts in the campaigns listed against the Japanese.

It would also be greatly appreciated if anyone had any in-depth information on particularly successful CCP campaigns and disastrous GMD defeats.

Thanks in Advance.

[Deterance]

In regards to Japanese atrocities, I am aware that attacks by Japanese on Chinese civilans occured in Burma and Thailand as well as possibly Indonesia and Malyasia etc.

In other instances Japanese forces instigated locals to commit atrocities (sort of like SS in Eastern Europe with holocaust). Burmese irregulars also attacked Indian refugees as well.

I cant find any good information on this area...does anybody know if these incidents documented in detail?

[orcrist]

The best information I have found on the conflict was written by Japanese officers for the US occupation force as Japanese Mongraph No 70, China Area Operations July 1937 - November 1941 . Prepared by Headquarters United Staes Army , Japan Distributed by the Chief of the Military History Department of the Army.
Also Japanese Monograph No 71 and 72 From the same source and continuing on for the rest of the war. All the campaigns are well desribed and a fairly complete order of battle for Japanese and Chinese forces are given. It is in fact the most complete history of the campaign that i know of and should be available through a library. I do have a copy of it and find it very useful.
Another book of general interst is KOGUN bY Hayashi & Coox , Published by the Marine Corps Association Quantico , VA in 1957, Not as full of information as the other Book mentioned above but worthwhile given the paucity of info about the Sino Japanese conlict 1937 - 1945 Orders of Battle for the Japanese Army in China and in the rest of the Pacific theatre are given in some detail .
Regards Orcrist

[Windward]

It was a boring and rude war. Three or four million hungry tattered soldiers fighting with few obsolete rifles, survived from starvation only by robbing civilians. KMT kept US aid for themselves, communists were more interested on fighting against KMT's army and expanding their own regime. After America was involved into the war, both side knew Japan will collapse so they keep their power for the future civil war. My great grandfather (my mother's grandfather), who was a KMT government official of the Hepei Province, was shot in a communists' ambuscade action in the Taihang mountains 1939.

And as I know, some Chinese historian pointed out that many communist guerrillas had made deals with Jap occupiers in southern and eastern China. Japs keep cities, towns, railways and roads, communists keep villages and mountain areas. Communist General Peng De Huai raised a battle against Japanese in northern China, which called as "Bai Tuan Da Zhan (hundred regiments battle) " , lasted from Aug to Dec in 1940, and he was censured by Mao Tse Tong immediately, for the battle was a "mass loss of our power".

Peng was censured and cursed again by Mao even after 19 years, during the Lushan Conference 1959, at the position of the secretary of defence. Mao said "(During the anti-Japanese war)Some comrades of us thought preventing Japanese to occupy (Chinese) lands are patriotic. But they were misthinked and absolutely wrong. The country they showed their patriotism to was the country of KMT, not OUR country. For we communists, the more (KMT's) land you help Jap to occupy, the more patriotic you are. Japan, Chiang Kai-Shek, and us, we are three nations." Then Peng was dismissed from his position (but I think another reason of Mao's retorsion, which was more important, was Mao's favorited heritor or his crown prince (as Kim Jong Il for Kim Il Sung) Mao An Ying was bombed and died in Peng's headquarters, during the Korean war).

There were no saints in high position. But the communists were a bit more incorruptible than KMT. The Chungking (or Nankin later) government was absolutely gangrened and villainous, nothing could help them.

[Windward]

Greetings,
I am doing a modern history paper in which i am proving that the CCP's involvement in world war 2 was the main reason for their success in 1949. Therefore i was wondering if anyone had the numbers of CCP troops in relation to their GMD counterparts in the campaigns listed against the Japanese.

You are right. The communist amry survived from the Long March were almost killed out in northwest China 1936, but the communists were smart enough to raise the anti-Jap mood all over the country, though Jap didn't break the war yet. Then a young general Chang Hsueh-liang (successor of a Manchurian warlord and exiled from Manchuria after the Jap invasion in 1931. He was the vice chief of China then) saved them. He raised a coup d'Etat in Xi'an, Dec 12 1936, arrested Chiang Kai-Shek and forced him to stop his assult. So you can say that the Japs really saved the communists. And as I mentioned in the post above, communist red army (later became KMT's 8th Route Army in N. China and New 4th Army in S. China) acquired 9 years to expand themselves since then.

[Andy]

I think people totally exaggerate when they talk about the Communist CHinese role in the war. People keep saying the Communists only wanted to expand and they only wanted to fight Chiang and the KMT. That is a lie, they expanded during the war because they did a great job during the war and people started to liked them during that time. They did way better against the Japanese than the Nationalists. The Nationalists were the ones that broke the truce with the communists. I cannot believe when people say that Chiang Kai-shek was a hero, even though he was a warlord who cared only for himselft. I know that Mao was one of the most despicable dictators in history, but he did a great job during the Sino-Japanese War.

[Windward]

I think people totally exaggerate when they talk about the Communist CHinese role in the war. People keep saying the Communists only wanted to expand and they only wanted to fight Chiang and the KMT.

Hey boy I think the word "only" was added by yourself. ^_^ Yes the communists did great jobs. But what jobs? They were successful to call on peasants, by land reform. But the lands were confiscated soon after the 1950's. They crop poppy in north Shaanxi and export opium. They fighting against Japanese occasionaly, and fighting more against Chiang's army, warlord Yan's army, warlord Bai's army and other KMT armies. When Chinese regular Army fighting in Burma, in Yunnan, in Henan, in Shandong, in Hunan, in Guangxi, on the land half of China, the 8th route army only raise some small skirmishes, as Pingxingguan fight from Sep. 22th to 25th, 1937 (115th Division still-hunted a Jap supplies regiment, killed about 800 Japs and 1200 to 1800 8RA men were killed), but communists historians and propaganda were glad to praise themselves, crow aloud, and write off KMT's brave fighting. As they said, KMT's army never resist, never fight, they run away quickly and collapsed fast when they saw a Jap warflag (I wonder why whole China was not occupied by Jap then). They never told us that there was another larger fight in Pingxingguan same in Sept 1937, in which the 78th and 84th divisions of 17th army fighting 16 days and lost 14,000men. Comm historians never told us this. And Kunlunguan, or Yerenshan, or Hengyang battle, etc. PS, because of the Pyrrhic victory in Pingxinguan, neither 8RA nor N4A raise active fight since then, besides the censured Bai Tuan Da Zhan, another Pyrrhic victory.

If you can read Chinese, you should read these two articles about Pingxingguan,
http://www.ch815.com/bbs2/dispbbs.asp?b ... 3&ID=31703
http://www.hjclub.com/TextBody/23543.asp?od=3


What Mao said on the Lushan Conference was what he really thought in the year 1940. And if you ask any guy in China who knows communist's history between 1960 and 1966, he will tell you another interesting thing. When Mao meet a delegation of Japanese Socialist Party in 1963, he said to the head of delegation Sasaki "Thanks Japanese for the invasion". It's indeed real thing.

[Gott]

The KMT had fought the Communists so well that Chiang was planning a final battle against the Communists, which had the battle had actually been executed, the Chinese Communist Party would have been destroyed. The reason why this final battle never took place was because Chang Hsueh-liang kidnapped Chiang. Chang forced the KMT leader to ally with Mao to fight the Japanese. These Nationalists never realised that the Communist would be gaining more power and support after this truce. After the SWW, Chiang did indeed broke the truce as he thought he would defeat the Communist. He did wrong. The Nationalist Army had low morale and gained little support from the masses. This is why after the KMT retreated to Taiwan, Chiang put a house arrest to Chang, the same general who kidnapped him in Xian.

But though Mao was a good revolutionary and spiritual leader, he was not a good administrator. Land reforms were indeed broken promises. The Great Leap Forward was a terrible failure which resulted in famine that cost 30 million lives. Mao never realised the increasing birth population was a time bomb for China's agricultual capacity. The Cultural Revolution brought China to a civil disarray.

Does this mean Chiang Kai-shek was a good leader compared to Mao? No! Chiang did not care about the feudal condition that still existed in Chinese rural areas. He never cared about the amount of corruption among the government. Chiang insisted on destroying dams during the Japanese invasion even though he knew just as much as 70 million people would go homeless and die.

[philodraco]

Does this mean Chiang Kai-shek was a good leader compared to Mao? No! Chiang did not care about the feudal condition that still existed in Chinese rural areas. He never cared about the amount of corruption among the government. Chiang insisted on destroying dams during the Japanese invasion even though he knew just as much as 70 million people would go homeless and die.

Do you know why Chiang have to destroy the Hwang Ho dikes? he must stop the Jap's army to take Hankow before the Chinese government and army, almost of them were Chiang's strongest army retreat from Shanghai and Nanking's front.
Without it, China can not insist 8 years, and can not win the final victory.
I understand the cost and victim is tragic, but if you were on the position of Chiang, what can you do?

[philodraco]

I think people totally exaggerate when they talk about the Communist CHinese role in the war. People keep saying the Communists only wanted to expand and they only wanted to fight Chiang and the KMT. That is a lie, they expanded during the war because they did a great job during the war and people started to liked them during that time. They did way better against the Japanese than the Nationalists. The Nationalists were the ones that broke the truce with the communists. I cannot believe when people say that Chiang Kai-shek was a hero, even though he was a warlord who cared only for himselft. I know that Mao was one of the most despicable dictators in history, but he did a great job during the Sino-Japanese War.

Sure, I know Mao had done some job during the Sino-Japanese War.
But in a time of national crisis, the most important job is made people to like them? to peddle themselves? certainly not. is fight the invader to the finish.
In 1944, a Japanese big offencive "operation Ichi-go" was began, the fully developed CCP force was on the flank and rear of the Japanese army.
What did they do?

[Andy]

Do you guys know any good English language books on the Communist role in the Sino-Japanese War?